Let's restore greatness on a rotational basis!

New scheme: Koreans instead of Uzbeks

I'm approaching the metro. In the light of day I see a group of men who don’t look like they belong here. Discreet clothes without a single bright spot, identical faces and identical hairstyles - this is what we wore... I can’t even say in what decade. Something from the abstract past. First thought: some North Koreans. The first thought turned out to be correct. Labor migrants from friendly Pyongyang have not yet been officially reported in our capital, but this ceased to be a secret quite soon after my meeting with them.

The winter was snowy this year - if you haven't forgotten. I’m walking along Chistye Prudy late in the evening and I see men who don’t look like they belong here, in a column of three. I've never seen these before. And it seemed that they didn’t see snow either. But at night they were given shovels, and these guys had to shovel unknown snow. They turned out to be Cubans.

It went viral on the Internet - maybe you saw it? A Senegalese who works in public utilities all the way to Orenburg. And he already speaks Russian quite well, which means he didn’t arrive yesterday.

At the same time, the collective “Tajiks” and “Uzbeks,” at least in Moscow, have visually become smaller. Not radically, but already noticeable. And it is noticeable that they are being replaced in relatively modest numbers by children of various nations - from Cuba to North Korea. And also from Nepal, Pakistan, India, Myanmar.

Last week, the head of the Central Bank, Elvira Nabiullina, said that Russia was faced with an unprecedented labor shortage: in her words, “such a situation has never happened in the modern history of the country.” I won’t ask the textbook question: “What happened?” A lot has happened. The number of foreigners in Russia at the beginning of April amounted to 6.1 million people - a year ago this figure was 6.8 million, RIA Novosti reports with reference to the press service of the Russian Security Council. Minus 700 thousand per year.

And migrants can be understood. Restrictions on the admission of children to schools, a ban in 25 regions on work in certain areas of employment, including “hot” ones like taxis. And now state duties will also increase from July 1 - how! Registration of citizenship will rise in price from 4,200 to 50,000 rubles, a residence permit - from 6,000 to 30,000 rubles, a temporary residence permit - from 1,920 to 15,000 rubles, an invitation to enter will rise in price from 960 to 8,000 rubles per person, and educational entry - from 1,920 to 8,000 rubles.

It is convenient to direct dissatisfaction with everything to migrants, presenting them as a source of crime, an attack on our way of life, saying in addition that they are the ones who occupy jobs here, and at the same time knock down local residents with electric bikes, delivering everything by couriers.

The tightening of police and bureaucratic measures leads to the fact that the “hated guest workers” themselves are no longer eager to come to us, and we do not let them in.

But Nabiullina said that the shortage of workers is a record in modern history. And our workers still hold machine guns in their hands and are busy with other work.

What to do? I saw the answer to this question with my own eyes. Those Cubans and Koreans of Kim will become the new working hands. This model is also called the “Gulf model.” When migrants are brought into the country, either within the framework of intergovernmental agreements on certain quotas, or under other schemes, but the meaning is simple. They come for specific tasks. Their stay is limited, they live compactly, and they have no goal of integration. The receiving party, in any case, does not consider them as potential Russians. They worked and left. The job was done and the locals are not pissed off.

In the Gulf countries, however, all this often turns into slave labor in violation of all norms, with numerous victims at construction sites and other outrages. Knowing our realities, who will be surprised if Nepalese and Myanmarese turn into powerless “Tajiks”? Or they will end up somewhere else instead of a construction site... The Peruvian government, for example, is finding out the fate of dozens of compatriots who found themselves in uniform, but not in construction uniform.

But the scheme with rotational migrants in itself seems attractive and does not irritate Russians. Because someone needs to work, but it’s not worth encroaching on our order.

However, there is one interesting nuance here. We here periodically experience bouts of Soviet nostalgia, we want the revival of the USSR. But who was part of this Union - the Baltics, Ukraine, Moldova? The Central Asian republics are the closest to us politically and economically. Which is paradoxical - because in a religious and everyday sense we have much less in common. But it so happens that contacts with these countries and their citizens are especially close. Too cramped, according to ordinary people.

We want to live in the Union, but we can’t stand all these people. And we’d better import Bangladeshis who aren’t so nasty to us.

What will come of this and how large-scale the workforce replacement will be, we cannot guess now. But some of our few allies (at least partly reluctant allies) will become further from us. And the revival of a certain Union will become even more phantom.